Feeling burned out?
Experiencing more than your fair share of stress on the job?
Dealing with exhaustion, anxiety, and even resentment toward your work?

I’ll bet you said “yes” to at least one of those questions. Not that it’ll make you feel any better, but you’re not alone. In a 2023 survey conducted by Deloitte, 77% of employees have experienced burnout at their current job, with 91% saying that unmanageable stress affects their job performance and 84% stating that burnout from work negatively impacts their personal relationships.

Ugh.

All this despite 87% of professionals saying they have a passion for their job, indicating that it’s not enough to love your work if you’re working in a constant state of stress or frustration.

And there are lessons here for company leadership as well as individuals. It’s a shared responsibility.

What if we asked a different batch of questions, like these:

What do you want out of life?
What are you curious about?
What problem would you like to solve?
What legacy would you like to leave?
And what are you prepared to offer the world?

If those questions seemed a bit foreign or daunting to you, worry not. Most of us don’t prioritize contemplating this sort of big, life-altering, earth-shaking prompts. Instead, we tend to go about our business, doing the best we can with what we’ve got, filling in the blanks of our lives with whatever’s handy. Dealing with the inboxes and emails and task lists and the people who are currently in front of us.

And getting stressed out about it.

We must do better. And with clarity of our mision, we can.

What’s a “mision,” you ask? Well, it’s the sum of a workplace (or life) addition equation:

Mission + Vision = “Mision”

Let’s start with Mission. Our mission answers the question, “Why?” As Simon Sinek famously shared, “Why?” is the foundational question that drives our business and life operations. With our purpose clearly articulated in our minds and hearts, the what and how fall into place. Our mission, then, is what grounds us in meaning – it’s the very reason we do what we do. A software sales company’s mission is to help businesses streamline their processes so they can be more efficient and profitable. Connecting those businesses with intuitive programs and data solutions in a cost-effective and user-friendly model, and offering best-in-class customer support, is the what and how of their operations. The mission propels everything else.

Next let’s examine Vision. In a previous post, I suggested one of a leader’s two most essential skills is to cultivate commitment to a clear, compelling vision of the ideal future. When things are going exceptionally well, what’s happening? What does it feel like? What are we accomplishing? In the case of the software sales company, that ideal future might look like robust sales, a burgeoning market share, incredibly high customer reviews, retention rates through the roof, and cutting-edge R&D opening doors for future growth.

Now let’s merge the two. The result is mision. The mision also lives in our heads and hearts first, as an emotionally-charged image of a meaningful, purposeful vision. In short, our mision is the answer to the question, “When we’re fully connected to our sense of purpose (mission) and we’re wildly successful hitting our goals (vision) simultaneously, what does that look like? How will we know?”

The tricky part of this endeavor is the knowledge that we can be mission-driven without being successful. We can also meet our benchmarks and metrics without engaging in work that addresses our why.

With clarity of our mision, we can connect those dots and experience spectacular success from the enlightened perspective of our mission as well as the operational viewpoint of our vision. As I wrote in Always Strive to Be a Better You: How ordinary people can live extraordinary lives, “We must connect with our mision in order to obtain clarity of our sense of purpose, to picture the ideal future outcomes, and to establish meaningful goals to pursue.”

The mision is our blueprint of ultimate success, no matter how you define it for yourself as an individual, for your company, your relationships, your organizations, or any other element of your life.

If we want to stave off burnout, whether you’re in leadership with concern for your team or you’re wrangling with perpetual stress in your life, perhaps it’s time to clarify and connect with your mision.

Pete Hall is the President/CEO of Strive Success Solutions. You can reach him via email at Pete@StriveSS.com.